


The Exquisite Corpse

by Lordlyhour, mitspeiler, polyfandrous, rezi



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, Let It Go, Multi, Other, The Cold Never Bothered Me Anyway, can't hold it back anymore, i don't care, let the storm rage on, turn away and slam the door, what they're going to say
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-18
Updated: 2014-08-18
Packaged: 2018-02-13 17:44:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2159466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lordlyhour/pseuds/Lordlyhour, https://archiveofourown.org/users/mitspeiler/pseuds/mitspeiler, https://archiveofourown.org/users/polyfandrous/pseuds/polyfandrous, https://archiveofourown.org/users/rezi/pseuds/rezi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Four friends played a game once, and it destroyed the world.  Those four friends were fanfic writers, and the game was this pile of insanity.</p><p>An important character is murdered and a crack team of ace detectives led by Terezi  Pyrope are hot on the suspect's trail, but can they catch the killer before Dave Strider gets his revenge?  And has the suspect...already been murdered?  The tension rises are more events come into play and more scandals come to light.  A torrid affair.  Cannibalism.  Public indecency.  Dildos with Comic Sans font.</p><p>"2tuniing." -Sollux Captor.<br/>"Soooooooo 8eautiful, they should have sent a po8," -Vriska Serket.<br/>"A mOtHeRfUcKiN mAsTeRpIeCe," Gamzee Makara.<br/>"A TRIUMPH...HISTORY WILL BE REMEMBERED AS THE TIME BEFORE THIS FIC, AND THE TIME AFTER IT," Karkat Vantas.<br/>"i didn't like it that mUch, sorry bUt yoU foUr have a long way to go as artists," Calliope Nixon.<br/></p>
            </blockquote>





	The Exquisite Corpse

John Egbert's body was found in the dumpster behind a porn shop.

Now, this wasn't just any pleasure boutique; this was The Time Warp, owned by the eccentric Dave Strider.  It offered bizarre and confusing things of tantric nature in Lurid Colours, low resolution and comic sans.  People would come from far and wide to sample its..."exotic"...wares, usually doing so because they had lost a bet.

It was into this shop that the ghost of John Egbert sauntered in a ghostly fashion, intent on haunting his former best friend—by haunting he of course meant hang out like they always used to do except with more jumpscares.

To his former best friend's credit, his only sign of shock as he said, "You're looking a bit pale, Egbert" were eyebrows lifted over the rims of his shades.

John merely stared; This was the first time he'd seen his friend emote this much and, thus, the first time he'd ever seen his eyebrows: black, thick and snaggly as the live-long day, They resembled nothing so much as a pair of renegade caterpillars. "Holy shit," whispered the newly Ectoplasmic Ectobiologist.  The revelatory shock of discovering after years that his friend had eyebrows would have given him a heart attack, if he'd still had a functioning heart.

John snorted. "You have the stupidest eyebrows man, no wonder you wear those dumb shades."

"What, these?" Strider asked, wiggling the hairy things about suggestively. "But seriously man, you're more transparent than a bride's veil right before the groom lifts it to lay a wet, sloppy smooch on her; what happened?"

John, Having been staring at the aforementioned Hairslugs, with his arm half outstretched as if contemplating touching them, took a second to shake himself out of the Fabled Browglance fervour of the Baldglarers as, luckily, they were not stubborn throes.  Now entirely undistracted by eyebrows, John took the moment to furrow his own translucent brow and deliver the news: "Dave, I woke up dead in a dumpster."

Dave nodded sagely. "Makes sense."

John sputtered.  "How in the fuck does that make sense!?  I think I was murdered, don't you care!?" And John took many transpermeable swings at Dave's face before realizing that they did nothing.

"Well how the shitty pixel art else would you be transparent and passing your shitty transparent hands through me? Obviously you're dead. Now quit doubting that we're bros, clearly it is an issue of epic Texas-sized proportions that you're dead."

John nodded, His worries that his best Bro cared not for his death abated masterfully.  "Then we should totally go find out who did it so I can haunt them!" the ghost giggled.  "Oh man, think of all the jokes I could play now I can go through walls. They'll be asleep and then I'll float in through a wall and dump shaving cream on them. It'll be so sweet!"

Dave had a moment of silence — not to mourn his best friend's death, but to ponder the endless pornographic possibilities his friend's new translucence had and exactly how many new customers would pull in... "Oh. Yeah," he said, snapping out of his daydream. "Sweet."

Meanwhile, outside by the dumpster in which John's corpse reclined, the woolly mass of Aradia's curls quivered with excitement as she peered down at the cadaver.  A huge smile split her face as she admired his cold, deadness.  "What...an _exquisite corpse!"_

Aradia's grin began to take a manic twist as she lovingly stroked John's corpse. If only he could see all the action he wasn't getting. Suddenly, she reached in her pocket, grabbed an object which appeared to be a pen, gave it a twist, and began slicing at skin, seemingly to remove various and calculated pieces.

After several minutes, She stood, surveyed her work, nodded in satisfaction and ran off. In addition to a large swathe of  skin having been removed from John's beauteous cadaver, she had carved the sign of Ares in the center of his chest  which, in the dim light of the trash receptacle, glowed faintly.  Away from the dumpster she fled, the Egbert pelt streaming out behind her as she ran. Hence she wasn't there to see what she knew would happen: the Aries symbol bursting into maroon flames.

Someone else, however, was there.

Kurloz watched soundless from the shadows, accompanied by his mind-slave Meulin, who was not being soundless whatsoever.  Fortunately, no one was around to hear her deaf babblings.

However, the ectoplasmic Egbert and his corporeal friend Dave were unaware of what was occurring just outside the questionable specialty shop. "Look, bro, lemme just call Terezi, and then we'll go check out your alleged 'corpse'."

"Dude, Terezi? She's always licking things, Dave! What if she licks my corpse? You know she's going to do that at some point. Then when you go and have your hot makeouts, you'll be indirectly smooching my corpse! There will be no Corpsesmooches if I have anything to say about it! "

"Then I'll dump brown paint all over your body first. She won't lick you if you smell like shit."

John simply stared.

"You know what," he added after a moment's consideration, "I don't mind that at all, considering that she's the only one who perceives colors like that.  You spatter me in paint bro!" John clearly did not understand or care that this would be tampering with evidence and would probably destroy all manner of important clues.

After a short while of examining the wares strewn with JPEG artifacts and attempting to jumpscare Dave ("It didn't work the first time bro, and I still know it's you so it's still not gonna happen"), Dave's phone buzzed. "C'mon Egbert, let's go check out your pasty corpse, all lovingly and comfortably draped in the dumpster. Terezi's already out there."

With a nod from John, the Ectoplasmic Ectobiologist and his Irony Clad bropal headed out to the dumpster, the former through the wall and the later only slightly more conventionally through the back window. Upon arrival, They were met by the sight of a merrily burning burgundy bonfire and the smell of cooking meat.

What they see is John Egbert's partially skinned body roasting on a bonfire.

What _she_ smells is conveniently sourced (and soon to be sauced) barbecue.

"What?" she asks.

"WHAT‽" they reply.

"You guys are having me over for a surprise barbecue?  That's sweet of you Dave, but you can't win me back with delicious fire-grilled meats!" Terezi declared, aiming her cane at Dave's chest like a saber.

John moaned ghostily.  "I'm DEAD Terezi!  Someone murdered me and burned the evidence!"

Terezi turned back to the crackling, merry, delicious fire and spent her time pacing around it and sampling the associated aromas. John spent the time groaning, and complaining quite fiercely (and pathetically) whenever it appeared that Terezi might lick the mount of sizzling meat.

After several minutes of perusal, Terezi turned to the porn shop owner and his buddy, one of whom was waiting eagerly for her wisdom and the other who was staring disinterestedly into the middle distance, wondering how he could eroticise the scene in front of him so as to make a few quick bucks off of his friend's plight.

"Are you two going to tuck in or what‽" she asked, grinning as per usual.

John responded by facepalming so hard his ethereal palm passed through his ethereal face, down past his ethereal back and nearly turned his ethereal body inside out.

"Yeah, that's probably a fetish," mumbled Dave.

In the shadows, Mituna got himself off while thinking of inside out ghosts.  "Sweet merciful communism," he stuttered, just loud enough to be heard.

Dave choked on his own spit slightly.  "Dafuq is this?"

"That's it!" John exclaimed. "This is officially the most elaborate prank I have ever seen. Good one guys, it was grand. Too bad it killed me and all, but what's done is done. You guys can stop now." The ghost looked at his friends, acquaintances, and... resident weirdoes, hoping to hear this was all an elaborate ruse, but was merely met with blank stares.

While those in the alley possessed of the sense of sight goggled at one another like idiots, Terezi decided to take the opportunity to sample the well cooked meat that had been tempting her with its nostril pervading stonk.

A deep sniff — "Ahhhh!" — and she plopped a chunk of Egbert flesh into her cavernous maw.

At this, John Egbert's poor, phantasmal mind could take no more: he fainted, falling to the floor with a phantom thump.

Everyone ignored him.

Terezi chewed, savoring the delicious taste of slow-cooked Egbert.  "Better than I imagined," she mumbled through a mouthful of boyflesh.  She tore off another one and ate it slowly, savoring the taste.  The skin burst in her mouth, full of juicy flavor, though also a fair bit of cartilage.  "What's this part even for?" she asked, and then stopped.

Not because she knew what the part was for, but because she tasted another familiar taste.  "This tastes like Aradia!" she loudly declared, thrusting her cane into the air victoriously.

"How do you know what Aradia tastes like?" asked Dave, just as Mituna, yellow-faced with embarrassment, asked _"did you just eat his dick?"_

Terezi turned and winked at Dave, looking both lascivious and evil in the way anime villainesses do: "Why, the same way I know how you taste, coolkid."

The phantom, prior possessor of the pasty, peeled and partly partaken of personage previously perched on a Promethean pyre piped up; "Tasting things is kind of how you see, right?"

"Psh, way to spoil my fun," she grumbled.

Mituna crept nearer, enticed by the promise of yummy Egbert. Prying just a chunk of roasted flesh from the bone and crunching it in his jaw, he instantly went into spasms of culinary pleasure on the floor, just narrowly avoiding roasting everyone else with psionic blasts.

John decided he'd better go back to being unconscious.

Dave briefly considered eating of John's flesh as well, but decided that it was too mainstream. What was not mainstream and always totally cool however, was avenging his best bro's murder and possible rape. So he took his Snowcone Machete in hand and ran after the crazy-adorable sheep headed bitch, hiking up his skirt as he ran for greater mobility.

"She's heading human west, coolkid!" Terezi shouted after him, as the troll in question had been long gone before the rest of the crew arrived on the scene. Must be some sort of irony thing, to go chasing after someone all passionately without any evidence, she thought.

Dave exuded an air of having already known that as he turned 127 degrees and ran off in the direction of a very camp Batman.

Terezi grinned at her victory, then, shoving Mituna's still writhing form out of the way, began licking John's corpse all over. For _Justice._  John's consciousness, about to return, decided preemptively to stay away a little longer.

Yet suddenly...

Terezi's corpse-molestation came to a halt. She'd discovered something. Anticipatory, dreading, she dragged her tongue carefully over a small section of singed skin...

"My god," she muttered, as coherently as she could do while her tongue was still in residence on John's body. Yet the shock rang through her voice loud and clear. What she had found was unmistakable.

She drew away from the body in pure, unadulterated fear and ran straight after Dave. All that was left was the terrible symbol she had discovered...

... a blood red tattoo on his body depicting a cartoon penis.

Dave, meanwhile, slammed headlong into Kanaya, knocking the both of them to the floor and sending her fashionable lady-hat hurdling into the gutter.

“Oh dear,” Kanaya mumbled, quickly gathering the contents of her scattered shopping bags.  Then she noticed Dave, and an image passed through her mind, an image of a passionate night spent in the embrace of a Queen-Elsa-but-as-a-naughty-Catholic-schoolgirl cosplayer.  Well did she remember how good that sparkly sailor fuku looked on her floor.  “Wait, Dianne?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Dave, visibly shaken.  “I need to go get revenge on somebody.”  He stumbled to his feet and ran away, blushing fiercely.

Kanaya, growling, lunged after.  “YOU LYING BITCH YOU SAID YOU LOVED ME!”

Dave, however, was completely unaware of the troll chasing him. In fact, he was unaware of his surroundings. He _was_ aware of a need for revenge, but had forgotten on whom, and could hardly see past the tears blurring his vision. And so it was that the ninja-like Strider actually tripped over some debris in an alleyway, and in her shock Terezi found herself unable to cease her chase, leading to her tripping over him and crashing headlong into a dumpster.

Staggering to her feet, with teal liquid dripping from between her hands, which she had clutched to her face, Terezi hissed in pain. Stumbling, she sniffed deeply, attempting to find her bearings before coming to the realisation that sniffing with a broken nose is hard.  She turned to the prone pornshop entrepreneur, who, just as equally stunned at his massive dorkitry, simply lay face down on the ground, content to stay there until all the mysteries of the universe resolved themselves in his mind.

Hence, with the vision of both compromised, neither of them saw the troll climb out of the dumpster. This was actually a pretty typical afternoon for him; being thrown into dumpsters was not a foreign experience to this particular troll.

Having a disgruntled and dumpster-smelling troll fall on them, however, was definitely a foreign experience to Dave and Terezi.

"Can't a guy just fuckin havve a quiet day in you knob-gobblers?" Eridan hissed.  "I'm trying to enjoy my lunch!  Not evveryday I get fresh meat!"

Dave gagged at his hideous accent.  "Dude where the fuck did you learn to talk?  You sound like if Dan Radcliffe was a Victorian Cockney gangster who got hit on the jaw with one too many steampipes."

Terezi sniffed.  "Fresh meat?"

Indeed, the troll was holding a joint of mutton, or rather something resembling a joint of mutton that was in fact quite grey on the outside and a deep burgundy on the inside.  

"Oh fuck," Terezi said, covering her nose.  "Oh shit fuck no!   _Are you eating my suspect!?"_

**Author's Note:**

> mitspeiler: The four of us created this monster as a game. Originally we were writing a sentence each, then a fifty word passage, and then finally I was just like “follow your heart, but try not to write entire chapters, okay guys?”  
> This is a form of a traditional game called "The exquisite cadaver" in which party goers write a line or two of a story, fold the paper, and pass it to the nex person, so they continue the story based only on what the previous person wrote. That would have been too irritating in my opinion, and I figured it would be funner to see what everyone else was up to and try to steer the story your own way.  
> I have no idea how this is going to be resolved or who committed the murder or any other damn thing, all I know is the last sentence will concern Equius probably. I’ve edited the story for grammar and consistency (i.e. to fix Lordlyhour’s parts) and to create coherent paragraphs instead of just having a bunch of random lines (with a few key italics now and again), but otherwise this is the original text as we created it on Skype. Be sure to check out everyone’s profiles! Except Lordly, as this is his groundbreaking introduction into the world of fanfic.
> 
> Lordlyhour; Such a beautiful entry into the world it is. Kicking and screaming and making a huge goddamn mess. Ain't childbirth beautiful, folks? I will maintain until my dying day that my poor attempts at spelling and grammar are due to my own personal laziness, rather than any particular ineptitude on my own part.
> 
> rezi: Our mutual magnum opus! So good to see it exposed to the world, so they can look upon our works, they mighty, and despair at how four human beings could possibly think up something so lacking in any sense whatsoever. It's beautiful. Excuse me while I wipe a single tear from my eye.  
> Also, utterly impressed at how even the first chapter is despicable enough to merit ALL FOUR archive warnings. *wipes yet another single tear*


End file.
